adanyeva2 wrote:Thx edgybros for sharing such interesting info. Now, I have a question both for myself and for you. Wasn't it supposed for kickstarter to be a launching, cooperative platform and not a tool for earning money?

miguel - i'm not sure what you're asking. as far as we're concerned, we did launch a product with the cooperation of backers (your input in particular was quite valuable). it wasn't like we cut corners at every turn to make a profit - we promised a deck of cards and other add ons with certain standards of quality and delivered on those standards, and ended up raising about 12% more than we needed to cover costs. but believe me, we had no idea what our final costs were going to be, because not every vendor can give you a final cost before you put in the order to manufacture the product. in fact, most can't. so, we're actually fortunate we didn't realize a loss. trust me, any real profit we were ever going to see on these products was always going to be in the after market, as it should be.

something backers should know about kickstarter campaigns - almost every creator has no real idea what their product is going to cost before they make it, especially if they are running their first campaign, like we were. they're just making their best guess. any profit, or loss, is almost always by accident. that's also true in the business world - it's a big risk, but we we're happy to take it, and we were thrilled that so many of you were there to support us.

adanyeva2 wrote:Thx edgybros for sharing such interesting info. Now, I have a question both for myself and for you. Wasn't it supposed for kickstarter to be a launching, cooperative platform and not a tool for earning money?

Since he hasn't posted again since posting this comment, I'm not sure that Adanyeva has seen the follow-up responses and questions. However, I think that some commentators may be misinterpreting his question...

My take on it is this: Adan is offering the opinion that KS was initially marketed as a tool for people with an idea for a new product, but no funds to start producing that product. The idea was that after raising production funds on KS, people would then continue to produce and sell their product in the "real world", away from KS, instead of returning to KS time and again as their primary sales venue.

i agree with Strag that this ship sailed long ago; and I even agree with the svede, that the way Adanyeva posed his question sounded fairly critical of Edgy Bros et al. However, maybe that was just poor wording from a non-native english speaker.

However, I do think the topic could be interesting to discuss further...

Clearly, the KS creators that we are most familiar with in the playing cards world use the latter model - returning to KS again and again with new products to sell. I don't frequent the other areas of KS much, so I don't know if it is more common for creators of other products to continue manufacturing and selling their products through other venues "after KS".For example, will the people behind the "million dollar coolers" take off with that idea, and continue to sell the same coolers for years through big box stores and/or their own web site? Or will they come back to KS with some new variation on their cooler, or an entirely new product? The former would be in line with Adanyeva's views, while the latter is essentially what we see from our playing cards KS "regulars".(of course, who's to say the cooler people couldn't do both?)

There are some factors i see at play in our little corner of KS. For one, most playing card campaigns are heavily marketed on exclusiveness. The cards are usually "only available through KS", or to the lucky few who pick up the extras later. This precludes KS card creators from continuing to profit from existing work, and forces them to keep coming up with new designs or variations. Second, the margins on a playing card campaign are extremely small. Even with ever increasing prices for decks, creators are hardly getting rich off cards. And i think that the price increases themselves are partly a reflection of creators realizing they are making extremely small profits (if any) in relation to the hours (months!) of work they are putting in. The amount of capital needed to start a fully independent business is much more than the meager profits being realized by even the most high-profile playing cards campaigns. These people are barely making enough to support themselves, let alone the funds to scale up their "companies".Third, KS has a huge following and incredible reach. There are probably just a few highly regarded card creators that have established themselves well enough, and built up enough of a following that they could probably leave KS behind. Uusi comes to mind as one that could, but I think the cards are only a small part of an already successful business. Jackson, obviously, has already experimented with doing so, and it will be interesting to see how often he continues to return to KS. It seems that there is just no replacing the amount of exposure and built-in following that creators get on KS. That 10% cut off the top, and whatever inconveniences creators face on KS, are obviously well worth it, or they wouldn't keep coming back. Even established pre-existing retailers have gotten in on the game, like Gamblers Warehouse and CPC, which is kind of an inversion of the original concept of KS, right?

I don't know why exactly KS has become such a huge player while other crowd funding sites seem like distant "also-rans". People with more web savvy probably have lots of theories. Regardless, i think it's actually because KS has grown far beyond its original ambitions that it has become more than an incubator of new companies, and more of a tool for general commerce available to all. I wouldn't be surprised to see more established retailers sticking their toes in the KS pool. After all, you're getting a lot of valuable market research data from KS without even necessarily committing to making your product. That's something that big companies spend tons of money on. I'm curious, Is there a KS clause that prevents a huge company like Nike (as a random example) from starting a project?

not sure why this topic grabbed my interest... if you made it this far, thanks for reading!

th4mo wrote:Clearly, the KS creators that we are most familiar with in the playing cards world use the latter model - returning to KS again and again with new products to sell. I don't frequent the other areas of KS much, so I don't know if it is more common for creators of other products to continue manufacturing and selling their products through other venues "after KS".For example, will the people behind the "million dollar coolers" take off with that idea, and continue to sell the same coolers for years through big box stores and/or their own web site? Or will they come back to KS with some new variation on their cooler, or an entirely new product? The former would be in line with Adanyeva's views, while the latter is essentially what we see from our playing cards KS "regulars".(of course, who's to say the cooler people couldn't do both?)

The profits on Playing Card projects can be pretty thin, especially with the popularity of Foil, Embossing, Interior Printing, USPCC printing Overages.... For example, the bill from USPCC for the White ORNATE Decks was over $104,000! Their quote of the Decks we ordered was around $85,000. Their +/- 10% rule actually raised the cost by almost $20,000 for the printing. THAT is why I will most likely never print through USPCC again.

thanks, Randy

EDIT: I saw that Brookstone stores were carrying the original 3Doodler this Holiday season. So, it's not like they're hurting on the Post-Kickstarter Market. They're most likely back on Kickstarter for the 2.0 version because of the amount of Pre-Orders they can acquire, not risking any of their profits from the original version.

RandyButterfield wrote:The profits on Playing Card projects can be pretty thin, especially with the popularity of Foil, Embossing, Interior Printing, USPCC printing Overages.... For example, the bill from USPCC for the White ORNATE Decks was over $104,000! Their quote of the Decks we ordered was around $85,000. Their +/- 10% rule actually raised the cost by almost $20,000 for the printing. THAT is why I will most likely never print through USPCC again.

That's pretty insane. I used to buy a lot of printing and almost NEVER had less than a 10% overage. Yes the margins on printing are generally pretty thin but it's disgusting they get away with it. When USPCC also has a minimum order it makes it even harder. I then used to reduce all my orders by 5% off my requirement and would get closer to what I actually wanted but it sucks that it was such a game.

That is distressing Randy. I'm heard of this more than a few times from credible people. It seems unfortunately Strag has come up with the solution. Lets just say I have never heard of anyone getting 5%-10% less decks. I thought there was suppose to be at least a fat guy on the line watching the count at the United States Playing Card Company I think they need a few more Tiffiny's and Ashley's to make the move to a 1000 minimum order...

th4mo wrote:Clearly, the KS creators that we are most familiar with in the playing cards world use the latter model - returning to KS again and again with new products to sell. I don't frequent the other areas of KS much, so I don't know if it is more common for creators of other products to continue manufacturing and selling their products through other venues "after KS".For example, will the people behind the "million dollar coolers" take off with that idea, and continue to sell the same coolers for years through big box stores and/or their own web site? Or will they come back to KS with some new variation on their cooler, or an entirely new product? The former would be in line with Adanyeva's views, while the latter is essentially what we see from our playing cards KS "regulars".(of course, who's to say the cooler people couldn't do both?)

th4mo wrote:There are probably just a few highly regarded card creators that have established themselves well enough, and built up enough of a following that they could probably leave KS behind. Uusi comes to mind as one that could, but I think the cards are only a small part of an already successful business. Jackson, obviously, has already experimented with doing so, and it will be interesting to see how often he continues to return to KS. It seems that there is just no replacing the amount of exposure and built-in following that creators get on KS. That 10% cut off the top, and whatever inconveniences creators face on KS, are obviously well worth it, or they wouldn't keep coming back. Even established pre-existing retailers have gotten in on the game, like Gamblers Warehouse and CPC, which is kind of an inversion of the original concept of KS, right?

Jumping in here, as someone who has backed projects in most of the categories KS offers.

I think one of the reasons why some creators with multiple projects return to KS is because of the ease of use. The system is already in place, and it is convenient. As it currently is, KS is more like a pre-order system because the successful projects have already done their preliminary work and just need the money for a production run/get a venue. I'm not sure how much Mike/D&D/Jackson spent on getting their own crowdfunding systems up, but I'm pretty sure that it will be beyond what most of them can afford.

The large user base was already mentioned - there is no need to pay for additional marketing, or send out emails to hobby/industry specific websites in order to get attention. By hitting one large group of people, knowledge of a project can spread via word of mouth - hobbyist to hobbyist.

As for creators selling their products on their own websites - I see it happen a lot in the other sections. The project creators usually get a number of extras and sell the rest on their own website at a marked up cost.

Hi Edgy Brothers,thanks a lot for sharing this data. I am about to start my own ks campaign and was wondering about one thing, are there no sale taxes to pay? As I read it, but only online and I am no laywer, everyone must pay sale taxes when those apply in a state(e.x. isnt it like 9% in CA for each product sold online?). But since they were not mentioned at all in your caluclation I assume you haven`t paid any. Do you had any legal advice on this topic or maybe the sale taxes are in the calcuation and I just didnt see them?

I also were wondering about the problems and cost related to the fulfillment process with different addon products. When I see it right you added a couple of different products to your decks which I assume come from many different producers. Were there any problems and do you feel they were worth adding?